Lighting Assignments

Village Idiot · Oct 21, 2011

Would anyone be interested in participating in voluntary assignments ala Strobist Bootcamp? If so, we could have some of the more experienced members collaberate on posting assignments with due dates to help people learn or brush up on their skills.

If you're interested in learning or teaching, post in this thread and we'll see in which direction this goes.

tirediron · Oct 21, 2011

Sounds like it might be a good time!

bazooka · Oct 21, 2011

I've wanted to do this 1 on 1 with someone but so far noone has taken me up on it.

Hobby already has a good curriculum set up, we could just follow it, creating an assignment that reinforces each 'lesson' in the Lighting 101 course... like relative light size, using gels for correction, etc.... that way they have some text to go along with the assignment, making them less random and more guided. What do you think?

The lighting sections (after the equipment section) are as follows...
Soft Light: Umbrellas
Soft Light: Wall/Ceiling Bouncing
Bare-Tube Style Lighting
Hard Light
Balancing Flash with Ambient
Using Gels to Balance Light Color
Cereal Box Snoots and GoBo's
Textural Lighting for Detail Shots
Cross Lighting
Back Light as Main Light
Headshot in a Corner
Lighting for Glasses
Long-Throw Hard Light
Reverse Engineering Other Shooters' Light
Know the Flash
See the Flash
Be the Flash
Don't Let Good Light Ruin a Photo

Those of us that would like to create an assignment(s) pick which ones we want or we could have a drawing.

Just some ideas, or maybe you already had something in mind in which case, kindly ignore.

Village Idiot · Oct 21, 2011

I had an idea to do something like that and the people that were interesting in teaching could volunteer to head up an assignment and could collaborate with the others if they need help or want someone to review it. Themes and what not could be assigned to each assignment and it could even have some of them go along the lines of the Light Essentials 52 week project where people would actually have to go out and make contact with people in their community to complete assignments.

This is better than the Strobist site in regards to being able to have more interaction between those teaching and those learning.

MTVision · Oct 21, 2011

What an awesome idea! I'm definitely interested in this! Obviously I would be learning!

gsgary · Oct 21, 2011

I thought about renting a village hall and taking all my lights and shapers for them to have a go, but not got round to sorting it yet been too busy

bazooka · Oct 21, 2011

I definitely agree with the interaction between 'assignment giver' and 'assignment provider' (I'm sure it would be beneficial if the assignment provider actually completed the assignment before assigning it....). It sucks when something like strobist becomes so popular that there is no way to have any meaningful interaction between student and teacher. Learning becomes stifled.

I was mearly suggesting instead of everyone coming up with random assignments, that we have purpose driven assignments that follow an intuitive path, much like a math curriculum would teach how to count, then how to add, then how to multiply. I think strobist L101 has such an intuitive path, but certainly is not the only way to do it.

I'm not familiar with LE52, I found the site and am looking it over now. Should be some good reading material for slow days. Anyway, whatever you decide to do, I'd be interested in either assigning or completing assignments, depending on what level of skill you are looking for.

Overread · Oct 21, 2011

Just a point, but you might want to use the sites group feature to help run this.

Just as an additional point if you click "New posts" then right next to that tab on the new page that opens is a New Group Messages tab to help follow groups (since it was a reported problem when they first appeared that it was very very easy to not follow them as easily as the main forum itself).

If it gets some use I'll ask around and see if we can't get the New Group Messages put onto the main forum pages like new posts is.

camz · Oct 21, 2011

I'll try to participate as much as I can count me in Village. Nothing like the rare photography related activity in a photography forum :lol:

Should be fun!

Village Idiot · Oct 21, 2011

Overread said:
Just a point, but you might want to use the sites group feature to help run this.

Just as an additional point if you click "New posts" then right next to that tab on the new page that opens is a New Group Messages tab to help follow groups (since it was a reported problem when they first appeared that it was very very easy to not follow them as easily as the main forum itself).

If it gets some use I'll ask around and see if we can't get the New Group Messages put onto the main forum pages like new posts is.

I was thinking about creating a group for the people doing the assignments.

Village Idiot · Oct 21, 2011

bazooka said:
I definitely agree with the interaction between 'assignment giver' and 'assignment provider' (I'm sure it would be beneficial if the assignment provider actually completed the assignment before assigning it....). It sucks when something like strobist becomes so popular that there is no way to have any meaningful interaction between student and teacher. Learning becomes stifled.

I was mearly suggesting instead of everyone coming up with random assignments, that we have purpose driven assignments that follow an intuitive path, much like a math curriculum would teach how to count, then how to add, then how to multiply. I think strobist L101 has such an intuitive path, but certainly is not the only way to do it.

I'm not familiar with LE52, I found the site and am looking it over now. Should be some good reading material for slow days. Anyway, whatever you decide to do, I'd be interested in either assigning or completing assignments, depending on what level of skill you are looking for.

That's what I was thinking. You have to learn to walk before you can crawl so there won't be assignments instructing people how to shoot fine art work for the first assignment. Start with the basics of flash exposure, flash and ambient, hard vs. soft, modifiers, etc...